COVID-19 Has Hit Developing Countries Hard. Here's How They Can Rebound.
This week on Fortt Knox (video embedded above) I wanted to try a conversation to leverage the power of the LinkedIn platform. In my reporting on CNBC, I've noticed that while advanced economies like the U.S. have lots of tools to weather the COVID-19 crisis, emerging market economies don't. I'm thinking of lots of countries in South America, Africa, Asia—they don't all have widespread broadband, digital payments, PC availability and governments able to prop up their societies with stimulus checks.
What does this crisis mean for those economies? And what have we learned so far that might help leaders there better position themselves in the tech-driven future?
To tackle this big question, I turned to my network. I figured the challenges the Caribbean faces are in some ways representative of emerging markets in general. Jean Arnell, managing partner at Computech, has been delivering technology services in the Caribbean for more than 20 years. I met him on LinkedIn through comments on my other posts and interviews, and asked if he'd have a broader conversation about it. He agreed, and sent me a link to a paper by economist Justin Ram, then a director at Caribbean Development Bank, delving into COVID-19's impact. I contacted Justin and he agreed to chat. Then I reached out to my friend Jacquie Charles, Caribbean correspondent at The Miami Herald.
In the conversation embedded here, live on LinkedIn, I got their insights into the challenges emerging markets face, and the policies and technologies that could help better position them in the future. For example:
Tech entrepreneur Jean Arnell on what the crisis has revealed:
"We work for many governments in the Eastern Caribbean and utility companies. And over the past couple of years, they've been very focused on digital transformation of the back office, integrating processes and standardizing data. However, work from home, home school, domestic and regional e-commerce, digital payments, including remittances that Jacqueline mentioned—those are nearly non-existent in the region. So this pandemic has exposed the fact that when there are no cruise ships coming in, there are no airlines coming in, that our economy is at a complete halt. And many, many governments as well as individuals are not at work. So we are seeing today a serious social situation transpire. So, my key message here is a need for us to adopt new technologies to create new business models, diversify our economy."
Journalist Jacquie Charles on how governments need to diversify their economies into tech:
"What I think the average person in the region gets frustrated about is that leaders pay a lot of lip service. And then we see very little innovation or willingness to make the investment, like we have seen they've done in terms of tourism. And I think that also we have to remember that the money transfer folks, the people who have the concessions, they wield a lot of power. So while the average person may say, 'You know what, I wish I had the ability to just do digital transfer, we need the digital transfer,' what we haven't seen is a willingness in terms of the legislation that needs to be put in place, or even with the central banks to do it. And it's very frustrating because, you know, as Jean just said, we need to diversify the economy."
Economist Justin Ram on tech allowing Caribbean countries to act as one:
"We've been speaking a long time about the need to have Caribbean integration. To see the Caribbean space as a single economic space. And while we have found that was difficult to do in a physical sense, because of the cost of traveling around, or because there were non-tariff barriers, for example, I think now with this move towards the digital age, we're going to see a lot more collaboration digitally by many people working across the across the region. So if for example, you are working on a project that requires someone who can best do that in Jamaica and someone in Trinidad and Tobago, someone in Barbados. Now, before we would talk about, 'Can we all come together? Can we all meet up physically to do that?' while now we're seeing it's going to be a lot easier for us to do that remotely using the digital technology."
Check out the full video, and feel free to add your thoughts.